


I Miss the Fire

by mademoisellePlume



Series: Tomorrow I’ll Switch the Beat [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: After-effects of being captured by the Galra, Gen, Manipulation, Nonbinary Pidge | Katie Holt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 23:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7821613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mademoisellePlume/pseuds/mademoisellePlume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shirogane Takashi was a man who’d always known where he was and where he was going. his thirst to explore the outer reaches of space was one he’d been aware of since he was small. </p><p>How was he supposed to have known where that would lead him? </p><p>or: </p><p>Escaping the Galra isn't the same thing as never having been captured by them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Miss the Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Demenior for editing this for me and working with me on coming up with some thoughts on Shiro's Fun Year.

Shirogane Takashi was a man who’d always known where he was and where he was going. his thirst to explore the outer reaches of space was one he’d been aware of since he was small. 

How was he supposed to have known where that would lead him? 

Shiro had been incredibly talented as a pilot, and had earned his place on the Keroberos mission, alongside respected scientist Dr. Holt and his eldest child. 

He hadn’t earned what had happened next. Being taken aboard a strange ship, brought back to a main fleet, forced into fighting for the pleasure of the Galra…. 

In a way, he’d sort of earned the worst and best part of his enslavement by them - being interesting and strong enough for their high-ranking military advisors to take a personal interest in him.

He didn’t know much more then that though. Most of that year (was it only a year?) was fuzzy and confusing, and he had few clear memories. Perhaps he should be grateful for that. Whatever had caused the scar on his face, or taken his arm, probably wasn’t any more fun than having little choice but to injure Matt Holt in order to spare him being a gladiator.

The important facts of the matter were that he’d escaped, he’d gotten back to earth, and when warning them didn’t work, some dumbass kids kidnapped him and got him pulled right back into an alien environment, literally. At least this time, he had better weapons, other humans around, and mostly got to choose what he did. He was even the de facto leader. And the bond with the Black Lion was always a comfort. 

“Shiro! What are you doing?” Keith called. 

He straightened and turned to see Keith and Lance across the field, both looking at him curiously. He hadn't noticed them leave their lions, and Lance was leaning his elbow on Keith's shoulder.

“Are you picking some flowers to help me woo Allura? I appreciate the help, but she’s totally into me already.” Lance grinned, attempting to flex his muscles..

Oh dear. Lance was having a hard time with adolescent hormones, even in space. “I think Allura can get her own flowers if she wanted some.” He told Lance carefully.

Keith got more of the hint then Lance did and just barely covered a little snicker with a ‘cough.’ Shiro sighed and continued. “I just wanted some of these flowers.” Shiro explained, showing them his handful of weeds, covered with little blue leaves with the tiniest lavender petals at the very end of each stem.

“Why?” Keith asked. “You never were much of a flower person before.”

Shiro paused, then shrugged. “Well I wasn’t going too long without being on a planet before. I just thought they’d be nice to remind me of being planetside.”

“Boring.” Lance said. “At least you could find something like a potato or carrot so Hunk can try making us some good food.”

“It’s going to be a long wait for french fries.” Shiro ruffled his hair with his free hand as he started on the way back to their lions. 

In his room in the castle, he had a little shelf of dried plants he’d taken from various alien planets. He didn’t really know why he chose the ones that he did. They were all very different, some weren’t flowers but pieces of bark, or only the roots of something. But he’d been drawn to each of them, and it gave him a feeling of safety to look at them. The smell of them all combined made him feel odd sometimes - almost queasy. He assumed that the scent was just too strong, and that the combination of different alien plants might make it worse.

It was late at night, but he knew what awaited him if he slept, so he patrolled the perimeter of the Castle of Lions instead, making sure there were no little surprises or enemies creeping in. 

It wasn’t as quiet as it should be. 

“Rover, stop hovering, I’m going to making this work, motherfu-”

“Pidge!” Shiro said sharply. 

Pidge shrieked and thrust themself back from the computer they were pecking away at. “Shiro!! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

“What are you doing up so late?” He asked, keeping one eye on where the floating repurposed Galra robot was at any given moment. Just in case. 

(After all, it wasn’t impossible there was something deep down in the device that was waiting to betray them all.)

“I could ask you the same thing!” Pidge said, putting a hand to their heart. “Geez, you scared me. I was just working on a program to try and piggyback on some of the Galra frequencies and decode some of what they’re saying, but encryption is a bitc-”

“Pidge, please.”

Pidge just rolled their eyes. “Whatever.”

“Maybe it’ll be a little more clear in the morning, kiddo. Everyone else is asleep.”

“You’re not.” Pidge wrinkled their nose at Shiro as they turned the device off, work in progress saved for the next day.

“I will be once I know you’re in bed and I finish my perimeter check. Now take Rover and get some sleep.” 

Pidge didn’t seem impressed by being sent to bed, but gave Shiro a one-armed hug before setting out for their quarters.

Shiro watched them go, Rover weaving through the air behind them. After they were out of sight, Shiro paused. Pidge had thrown a small piece of Altean tech into a corner earlier in frustration, it looked like - it was broken, and problem not useful at all. Shiro barely hesitated before picking it up and moving on with his pacing of the castle’s halls.

It was nice having little things that reminded him of his friends. 

\------

In the morning, everyone sat around a table, eating food served by Hunk and discussing their next steps. Allura wanted to check on a planet a few light years away that had been an Altean stronghold once, but Pidge was convinced that their new device, aimed at getting some of their secret communications, was going to net them the perfect place to attack if Pidge could just have a bit more time to work on it.

“Why don’t you just work on it on the way to this other planet?” Hunk asked. 

Coran had made a side-dish to go with breakfast, mostly for Allura and himself, but Shiro grabbed some of that anyways. Hunk had recently developed a good talent for bartering, and was finding them all sorts of strange new meats to sample from other planets. But it was nice to eat something and know it hadn't once been a living, thinking creature before."

Shiro knew Hunk would point out what had meat in it, if anything did, if he asked, but he hated to draw attention to himself for something so small when they had work to do. 

And he’d eat meat if that’s all there was, he just preferred a more vegetarian diet. Things tasted cleaner. Weirder too, but that was okay.

“What if that’s the opposite direction from where we should be going?” Pidge asked, waving their fork in the air before jabbing it into their mouth. They kept talking as they chewed. “I want to go after tactically important locations they’re not expecting us to hit without some means of information gathering from a prisoner like Sendak.”

Shiro’s own grip on his fork tightened, but he didn’t say anything, just ate the wobbling tube he’d speared with it.

“We can get more supplies from the planet Ellya, maybe access some ancient stores of Altean technology.” Allura pointed out. “We’d be better supplied for any strategic attacks you want to make in that case.

“What do you think, Shiro?” Keith asked, and every head at the table turned to look at him.

He finished chewing his mouthful of Altean food first, using that time to reflect on the two options. “More supplies won’t be a bad thing. We have no idea what we’ll find with your device, Pidge, or where that will take us. In the meantime, we shouldn’t stay still out of indecision.”

Pidge huffed but gave no further argument, so Allura stood up, cleaning off her hands with a napkin. “I’ll go get us headed to those coordinates. Paladins, make sure you’re ready, just in case we run into trouble.”

“I’ll assist you, Princess!” Coran followed her. Shiro took advantage and took the remainder of the Altean food for himself.

“Would you like to try some of this ? It almost tastes like mac and cheese, if the mac was also gloopy!” Hunk asked, offering Shiro a bowl of green goo, his big smile faltering just a little.

Lance leaned back, hands behind his head. “You don’t need to make Coran feel better about his cooking skills, he’s gone now!”

“It would be a shame to let his food go to waste in any case.” Shiro told Lance, trying not to focus on the shoulders that were just beginning to hunch from Hunk. Damnit. “Of course I’ll have some, Hunk.”

Keith got up and stretched. “Thanks for cooking today, Hunk. Whatever critter you traded for tasted almost like… chicken?” He clapped Hunk on the shoulder and went off to train, probably.

“If the chicken you mean is one that was turned into a weird jelly before cooking, maybe.” Lance snorted.

Shiro smiled weakly and scooped a helping of the dish Hunk proffered onto his plate, before going right ahead and digging into it. “Delicious, Hunk, you did a wonderful job. Was any of that meat in this dish?”

“Yep! Could you taste it?” Hunk asked proudly. Getting some meat into the Castle was a challenge, and one he tried to undergo whenever possible - most of the humans weren’t used to a vegetarian lifestyle.

“I could, yes.” Shiro had a few more bites, then had to lay down his fork. “Who taught you how to cook, Hunk?”

Lance ate the rest of Hunk’s concoction off Shiro’s plate when he noticed Shiro wasn’t eating any longer, instead listening to Hunk explain. “My grandma and mom taught me how - we didn’t always have a lot of food, so we had to take what we had and make it taste good and last as long as it could.”

“Well, they taught you well, you’ve been a lifesaver for the team.” Hunk laughed, cheeks reddening before starting to gather up any uneaten food. Shiro started to gather up the plates, and after it was done, had the spoon that had been on Hunk’s plate in his hand. They had plenty, after all. No one would miss one spoon.

Shiro returned to his quarters to add that to his weird little collection - he was kind of turning into a packrat, it seemed. It was a nice feeling though, having his own things, that belonged to him. It was kind of stuff that looked like rubbish, but it wasn’t like being a Paladin paid well - or at all, really.

One shelf of various dried alien plants, and another of little things that reminded him of the people who he knew well in one way or another. 

The piece of Altean technology that Pidge had discarded, the cup that Coran had given him for the strange drink he kept calling the ‘nectar of the gods’ on the night of the party on that first planet they’d all met at. He had a bit of sand that had been in his boot from the desert around Keith’s hut, a frayed white string off of Lance’s hoodie, a pin for Allura’s hair that had been twisted out of shape and discarded. A piece of glass from the cryopod that had held Sendak, that had been easy to pry off after he’d punched the front of it and then launched him into space in a panic. He put Hunk’s spoon with the things of their friends. The glass was off to the side, next to a little scrap of fabric from a robe. He wasn’t sure whose robe that was. The memory was just out of reach, so far. 

He touched it gently, unable to quantify the way it made him feel. 

His collection was complete for now, then. Nothing could really represent the lions, and even if there could be something, it wouldn’t really be right.

The rest of the day was simple. Encourage Pidge with their project, train a little with Keith, discourage Lance from hitting on the Princess, ask the Princess when they were planning on arriving (by noon the next day), helping Hunk clean the space debris off his lion and getting Hunk’s help with cleaning off the Black Lion as well.

Pidge was reduced to inarticulate swearing at their device, so Shiro sent them to sleep before anyone else, promising that they’d do better once they got enough sleep. That meant when everyone went to bed, doing a quick check through the ship was simple and without interruption.  
It meant there was less to do in order to delay sleeping.

Shiro shook his head as he changed into loose, comfortable pants to sleep in. It was ridiculous, thinking that way. Nightmares came and went. Weirder dreams did too. The important thing was getting some rest so he could pilot the Black Lion well, and guide the team wisely.

Determinedly sensible, he rubbed at the scar on his face, checked that the door to his quarters was secured, and got into bed. 

He laid on the mattress, staring into the darkness, waiting for sleep to take him. It was dark enough that he couldn’t see anything, that he might confuse where he was if he had a nightmare or a flashback. Keeping lights on would be admitting fear of them though, would be a step too far. He’d rather just deal with them as they came.

Even if he did fear every flashback he had. Every unearthed memory was a treasure trove of horror.

Really though, if he just was sensible at those times, he’d know he wasn’t in a Galra ship. The purple aliens had fur aplenty, so the temperature of the ships had been… colder. He knew that. Every memory that had returned to him had the underlying memory of goosebumps and hard nipples and shivering at night.

The Altean castle had been drafty, at first, but now that it was in space, temperature issues weren’t something any of them took notice of. It was just comfortable, for all of them.

He had barely ever felt comfortable with the Galra, he thought sleepily. Too tired to resist stupid impulses, he followed the thought - had there been a single moment of comfort in the year he’d been captured by them?

Vague memories drifted in his head. Purple sheets, a cage nearby, barely as tall as his knees, the smell of strange herbs in the air, and sharp nails rasping gently across his scalp, moving through the hair that he didn’t prefer kept short. 

The memory was very vivid. He curled up a little, closer to the body heat of the other figure in the bed. The air felt cold against his back.

“Dear Champion, one would think you missed my sweet embrace.” 

Shiro stopped moving. Stopped breathing. He knew that voice.

Slowly, his head turned to the side. Long white hair, straight and thick. A sharp chin, and two thick red lines lining either side of the face that peered down at his with a very smug little smile. Golden eyes, glowing faintly in the dim light.

For a second Shiro remembered his own doppelganger strangling him, remembered this same face clawing his side with dark magicks. 

That memory faded against older ones, the ones this probable dream had borrowed it’s setting from. Being allowed out of the cage, instead resting at the foot of the bed. He had Been Good and was being Rewarded. A pet that did tricks instead of biting the hand that fed it. 

Haggar had taken an interest in the Champion. In improving the Champion. 

In teaching the Champion.

“After you so rudely defied our Emperor, Champion, I quite despaired. All that work in examining and instructing you, wasted. I had you trained so well, my dear, until you decided to leave.” Haggar’s voice went hard on the last three words, his hands still carding through Shiro’s hair with all apparent gentleness. The hairs on the back of Shiro’s neck were standing up, a shiver crawling gently down his spine.

His body knew the dangers of this woman, even if his mind didn’t recall everything clearly.

“I- I…” Shiro stammered. All of his new defences were gone. His defiance, his independence… it faded in the face of the Galra beast that had swallowed him up before and had taken so much from him. 

“Do you miss this, Champion?” Haggar continued, her tone lightening again, leaning back against her headboard, adjusting herself minutely to allow for her comfort and Shiro to be half in her lap. Purple sheets lay over Shiro, providing extra insulation against the cool temperatures of the Galra ship. 

Shiro couldn’t answer, panic freezing his tongue even as his body relaxed slowly into Haggar’s touch. She didn’t grow crueler, in a fit of temper as she was prone to, at Shiro’s lack of response.

“Come now, who’s here to hear? It’s just you and I. Why lie in a dream?” 

“I don’t remember.” Shiro took refuge in a semi-truth. Would it be a lie if he said what was on the tip of his tongue? He dreaded the Galra trappings around him, and he felt utterly vulnerable. Haggar was the right hand witch of Zarkon, was immensely powerful, and wielded strange and complicated magic. And she was peering down at Shiro with a smirk.

“Poor Champion, acting on the shadows of memories. How little of your time as a guest of the Galra Empire do you remember?”

Nails dug into his scalp as a warning. Haggar was a scientist in a strange way, as much as she was a witch. She wanted to observe and keep mental notes on the progression of the many experiments she ran. Shiro knew that, though he couldn’t answer how he’d learnt that.  
“The arena. When they started… calling me Champion.” Shiro said slowly, looking across the room rather than at Haggar’s face. There was a shelf with a helmet on it like Zarkon wore, but with a burn mark marring one side of it. There was a glowing line in a circle around it, and his head hurt to focus on it long. There was a black bag on a workstation, on it’s side, it’s contents spilling out. Hunks of very white bone, smoothly sliced up, with Garlan symbols carved into the flat sides.

There were alien plants - probably herbs and spell ingredients hanging on the wall, he noticed next, his eyes sliding away from the arcane things on Haggars shelves and desk. The joint of his arm and the Galra prosthetic was aching - maybe he was sleeping on it funny.

“Your first fight. When you hurt your own companion in your eagerness for blood.” Haggar chuckled. “I’m not surprised that memory refused to stay down, Champion. Earning your title in blood and in betrayal goes bone deep. And it garnered you some attention, now didn’t it? My attention.”

Hagar’s fingers went to Shiro’s chin and directed his gaze back up at Haggar’s face. “I made you strong, Champion. I gave you a strong right arm, and I taught you what you could learn of another kind of strength. You don’t need memories to benefit from that. Just like you don’t need memories to remember that you owe me for everything you are.” She pulled Shiro up off the mattress so he had to balance on his knees to keep from being dangled from her other hand digging into his shoulder painfully, her nails scoring his flesh. 

“I don’t want to use anything you gave me!” Shiro said through his teeth, because if he didn’t show defiance he didn’t think he could live with himself upon waking. No matter how all of his instincts told him to be quiet, to wait, to give in. He wasn’t a slave anymore! He’d escaped!

“But Champion… Apprentice… don’t you know you already are?” Haggar grinned and started laughing as she shoved Shiro backwards. The room spun around Shiro, multiple Haggar’s appearing, reaching out to him with scalpels and knives and cudgels and worse in her hands-

And then Shiro jerked upright in bed, right hand clapped over his mouth to smother a scream. 

“Just a nightmare. Just a nightmare.” He whispered, throwing off his blankets and getting to his feet, running his real hand through the longer hair on his head. “It wasn’t real. I use the arm because I have no choice, and no other weapon, but that’s it, nothing else. I’m just. I’m worked up.” He was pacing, trying to get his heartbeat on a steadier rate, trying to get his thoughts back in order. 

His stomach was twisting. He touched it with his real arm, feeling skin against skin, trying to soothe the sudden nausea. 

He still could smell Haggar’s room. That wasn’t right. It hadn’t been real. It was warm now, he was in the Altean castle. Why could he still smell it?

It took him a moment, then he stopped and slowly turned his head. 

The plants.

He’d been gathering plants. Herbs. Spell ingredients. He couldn’t breath. Apprentice, Haggar had called him. Shiro turned, wanting to flee from the room, and stopped. 

In the mirror, he could see bruises on his shoulder, as if left by someone’s hand holding him tight..

“No. No, no, no.” He grabbed the blanket from the bed, pulled it around his shoulders and left the room at a quiet run.

He spent the rest of the night in the Black Lion, listening to it’s murmur in his head and trying to convince himself that there was nothing else in his mind but the bond with the lion and his own thoughts.

It would be nice to believe that.


End file.
